Digital marketing has revolutionized how businesses connect with their target audience and achieve their marketing goals. In today’s fast-paced world, having a strong online presence and effective digital marketing strategies are essential for business success. Entrepreneurs like Shawn Sundsvold have recognized this need and have successfully started and grown their digital marketing agencies.
In this article, we explore the valuable lessons and insights gained from the experience of Shawn Sundsvold, a seasoned entrepreneur who successfully started and grew his own digital marketing agency, GoldBear Media https://www.goldbear.media/.
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What is your business about?
Shawn Sundsvold: GoldBear Media is a digital marketing agency focused on organic social media growth, website design, and SEO. We love working with coaches and small business owners transitioning to a larger growth phase for their businesses. Part of the reason we like working with smaller companies is their passion for what they do and their willingness to try the unconventional. We also get to meet many business owners of unique businesses and understand more about their communities.
What inspired you to start this business? How and why did you start your business?
Shawn Sundsvold: What inspired us to start this business requires a little bit of backstory on our life.
In 2019, I had to have emergency back surgery to remove an abscess in my spine. What started with some significant back pain quickly turned into something pressing on my spinal cord’s nerves and quickly working its way to leaving me paralyzed from the waist down. After surgery and 4 weeks in rehab to relearn some of the basics, like walking and rebuilding strength, I was sent home to recover. Unfortunately, the infection hadn’t totally cleared my system (even after 6 weeks of IV antibiotics), and about 3 months later, the infection returned to my hip, so I needed a hip replacement that year too. All in all, I was out of work for 13 months.
2019 was a very challenging year for our family, so when 2020 came around, and I was back to work, my wife Kelly, who has been in marketing for over 20 years, decided to pick up some freelance graphic design work to start working through the accumulated medical bills from 2019. When March came around and COVID pushed everything digital, her phone wouldn’t stop ringing. What started with helping some friends create business cards, and flyers turned into an additional full-time salary for our family in just a few months.
So we started GoldBear Media.
In 2021, we kept up the momentum and the side hustle until September, when Kelly was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. She had just turned 40 and gone in for her first
mammogram. Luckily, thanks to early detection, Kelly’s process and battle with cancer was not long. While she was recovering from surgery and preparing to go through radiation, we came to the decision that it was time for us to pursue the business full-time, as the growth had not slowed down.
So in August of 2022, Kelly left her full-time job to begin working at GoldBear Media full-time, and I was able to join her in October of 2022.
The long-winded answer to the very simple question is time. Our inspiration was time. We wanted more time to be able to spend with our four teenage children and each other. Long life is not guaranteed, and we both faced serious health concerns that fundamentally changed our view on our life’s direction.
What were the biggest challenges you faced in starting your business?
Shawn Sundsvold: The biggest challenge has been building a consistent pipeline of business. We’ll have 1-2 months of bringing in new business because we’re really focusing on it, and then a couple of months of nothing new because we’re deeply focused on client work and ensuring all of our clients are taken care of.
Another challenge has been building systems to help us scale, which also allowed us to give more transparency to clients about what was happening with their projects.
When Kelly was doing this for 2 years as a side hustle, keeping things on a spreadsheet or some other simple system was easy. However, it would not work if we were going to grow and add people to our team.
I’ve got a background in sales and management, so business development has been a big part of my role within the company. We’ve added a CRM, a project management system, and a couple of other tools to help give clients more visibility into their projects.
The final challenge for us was learning to communicate with each other regarding different parts of our life. We’re married, business partners, have kids and are now dealing with home and business finances. Needless to say, if we didn’t get good communication down regarding how we handled all that, it could blow up in our face pretty quickly and ruin many things.
How are you marketing your business?
Shawn Sundsvold: We’ve really focused on connecting with in-person local groups around where we live, specifically chambers of commerce.
We are also very active through social media accounts and other online and in-person networking groups. Our best clients have been those we’ve developed relationships with, so we get word-of-mouth referrals too. This has allowed us the opportunity to help clients not only locally but as far away as California.
How are you balancing your business with your personal life?
Shawn Sundsvold: One of the best things about working for yourself is the ability to define your own schedule.
Before switching to both of us working for our business, we had very demanding full-time jobs and were balancing a lot to make things work. By turning the focus to our own business, we’ve found a better balance because we can focus more on the priorities that matter to us and our clients. Don’t get me wrong, we still put in 50-60 hour weeks (and sometimes more) while we’re building our fledgling business, but we get to define what that looks like and how we prioritize our time.
One way we do this is to plan the events we will attend each month. We also try to plan a date night, time with our kids, and as we get through the next few months of focusing on growing the business, we’ll start trying to plan more time away, but right now, we’re 100% focused on building a solid foundation to grow on.
What lessons have you learned so far about being an entrepreneur?
Shawn Sundsvold: For us, there have been 4 major lessons
1. It never happens as quickly as you’d like.
We all want to see our businesses grow quickly and achieve the dreams we envision when we start our businesses. However, it often doesn’t happen that way. There are so many things along the way to learn that you’re not ready for and will require time to learn. Keep focused on the long game and achieving your goals along the way.
2. Keep track of your progress so you have something to back on when hard days come.
As entrepreneurs and business owners, it’s not a question of “if” hard days will come along; it’s more about “when” they come along. Having a way to track your progress and how your business is meeting the goals you set is crazy important to help get through those hard days. It gives you data and support to fight the negative feelings and statements in your head.
3. Have a network of other entrepreneurs in your corner who challenge you to be your best.
We are the average of our 10 closest people. I love having a network of people around me to encourage men when I’m struggling, challenging me when I think I’ve got it right, and helping me to improve as a human and business owner. Being an entrepreneur can be lonely, so picking good traveling partners is important.
4. Be consistent.
Take steps every day to help your business move forward. It doesn’t matter how small it is; be consistent, and you’ll get there.
How do you see the business five years from now?
Shawn Sundsvold: We’ve always wanted slow, consistent growth while focusing on the client experience.
Five years from now, we’d love to have 3-5 more people on our talented team and offer marketing mastermind groups to interested businesses. There’s such a wealth of knowledge that’s available from everyone’s experience that we’d love to create a platform that helps others learn from that and improve their business.
What tips can you share with other entrepreneurs thinking of starting their businesses?
Tip #1: Have a plan.
If you’re working full-time right now and want to start a business, do your homework and build a plan. Talk to others in the field you’re interested in getting into, and learn as much as you can from them. Do research online. Take classes. There are so many people out there to learn from. Find the ones you resonate with and have had success with.
Tip #2: Know your numbers
The biggest danger for many new entrepreneurs is that they don’t understand all the costs of running their own businesses. So many new business owners just focus on making enough money to survive in their first couple of years and forget that they will owe taxes on that money. It will cost more to run your business than you think. If you’re not great with numbers, hire an accountant and business coach to help you figure it out. Most businesses don’t make it past the first five years because they’re not making enough profit to survive and weather rough times. Don’t become a statistic. The help is out there.
Tip #3 Be consistent and work on it every day.
Spend 15-30 minutes every day helping to move your business forward. Maybe that means sending out emails to connect with past clients or working to strategize something for your business. The only way a business grows is by the entrepreneur or owner taking time to work on their business and not getting stuck in the weeds of day-to-day projects.
